Poki Developer Spotlight: No Pressure Studios

Battle Blast is a first-person arena shooter, designed from the ground up for browsers. That means seamless tab-switching and AI smart enough that players never notice when competitors drop out. 

Steven Derks and Nick Timmer of No Pressure Studios built everything needed for Battle Blast to exist: an engine, a network stack, development and optimization tools. Then they made the game.

Steven and Nick met in 2013 at a mobile game studio which unfortunately had to close its doors. Rather than go their separate ways, the duo continued working together and began experimenting with web gaming. These experiments eventually developed into No Pressure Studios, and a growing catalog of 1500+ web games built on Poki over the past seven years.

"In the mobile space, and even on desktop or console, it's quite hard to get your game noticed," Nick says. "The power of the web as a platform became apparent to us once we launched our first game on Poki and the traffic just started flowing in. It was just such a huge difference compared to the app stores."

That audience gave them something mobile rarely offered indie developers: room to experiment without needing ad spend to find players. A sandbox racing game. A first-person horror experience. And now, Battle Blast, a multiplayer arena shooter that Nick began work on while Steven was on holiday.

"I thought, oh, we're going to make Stickman Climb multiplayer," Steven says. "And then he sent me a video: ‘What if we make a first-person shooter?’ Of course, I’m immediately like ‘Oh yeah, let's do it!’ "

No Pressure Studios is built for the web from day one. One of the appeals of web gaming is that it removes the barrier to play: no client to download or app install to commit to. Players simply open a tab and they’re straight in the game. However, that also means that the game needs to integrate with that functionality. When a player switches tabs on a browser game, locks their phone, or swipes away, the game freezes and the player effectively disconnects. For a casual puzzle game, this has little impact, but for a live multiplayer shooter it’s a major consideration to address.

"We needed a network system that can seamlessly disconnect and continue playing offline, and then later - when the player has a connection again - it returns to online battles, all without the player knowing," Steven explains. "That's a requirement that not many network systems really meet."

To address the issue of tab switching, Battle Blast introduced bots which appear when a player disconnects. Their AI uses dynamic difficulty, reading how well the remaining player is performing and adjusting the challenge in real time. The seam between multiplayer and single-player is, by design, invisible. No friction, just play. 

This philosophy runs through every technical decision in the game. Rather than scaling expensive game servers, the duo built host migration into the network layer. If the host disconnects, the role passes to another player automatically. The backend handles matchmaking and connection, and the rest is handled peer-to-peer.

The technology behind Battle Blast is, by any measure, impressive. No Pressure Studios built their own engine layer on top of PlayCanvas, an open-source browser game engine. They call it No Pressure Sandbox: a reusable foundation containing everything needed to build an arena game, including playable characters, weapons, vehicles, an AI system, a customization layer, loot, and questing.

On top of that sits No Pressure Net, their custom network system that took three years to build. It's engine-agnostic, meaning it could theoretically run on Unity with a JavaScript bridge, though for now Battle Blast is its only application.

PlayCanvas doesn't include in-game developer tools, so the duo built those too. A full editor with hierarchy, inspector, game view, and scene view, running live while the game is active. Steven wants to release it publicly for other developers to take advantage of.

"Being able to observe your game and edit stuff while it's running is really helpful," he says. "That’s something I would love to release at some point because I know a lot of other developers have had this problem as well."

Battle Blast launched as an arena shooter, but it won't stay that way forever.

Vehicle combat is already in development. Nick hints at cars, buggies, and eventually planes. "Unreal Tournament 2004 vibes," Steven says. "That was super cool."

The multiplayer technology they built for Battle Blast is already being considered for implementation across their existing catalog. Fear Response, their cooperative horror game, is being tested with an online multiplayer mode. 

Nick points to something he noticed while watching his nephews play. "They don't really interact with other people, but they do want to be in an online environment. Like an MMO vibe. It's so important for most kids to feel that they are in a world that's alive and with other people playing it as well."

For developers wondering whether web gaming can support experiences of this scale, Battle Blast is a pretty clear answer.

"What I love about web gaming from a technical perspective is that you don't have to make builds for specific hardware," Steven says. "It is so nice to just make one build and it runs on desktop, Android, iOS, any tablet, smart TV. I love that part. You can iterate more quickly."

“Working with Poki is more like a collaboration instead of the App Store approach, where it's just you as a developer against the world,” Nick says. “The App Store is more data and ad-driven to get people into your game, whereas Poki is like a team effort. You get tips and tricks on how to get your game more exposure.”

Their advice to developers starting out is simpler than any of the technology behind Battle Blast. "The biggest thing we always say to ourselves is that as long as we make a game that we enjoy playing, other people will enjoy it as well,” Nick says. “If it’s fun, just put it in there,” Steven adds. “Yeah, like, why not?”

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A big thank you to Steven and Nick for sitting down to speak with us about the development of Battle Blast. We’re always looking for exciting game ideas that really innovate in the web gaming space, so if you have an idea for a game that you want to reach millions of players, get in touch and let’s explore your idea together.